Indian researchers: Coffee won’t give extra heart beats

New York: Indian-origin researchers reported that regular consumption of caffeine does not lead to extra heartbeats. Extra heartbeats can cause to the rare cases of stroke-related morbidity and mortality.

The study, led by researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), measured the chronic consumption of caffeinated products over a 12-month period.

“Clinical recommendations advising against the regular consumption of caffeinated products should be reconsidered as we may unnecessarily be discouraging consumption of items like chocolate, coffee and tea that might actually have cardiovascular benefits,” said senior author Gregory Marcus, health cardiologist and director of clinical research.

“Given our recent work demonstrating that extra heartbeats can be dangerous, this finding is especially relevant,” he noted in a paper published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Excessive premature atrial contractions (PACs) have been shown to result in atrial fibrillation, stroke and death while excessive premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) have been shown to result in increased heart failure, coronary artery disease and death.

Both abnormalities have been tied to caffeine consumption through studies and trials but these studies were performed several decades ago and did not use PACs and PVCs as a primary outcome.

In their study, Marcus and his colleagues analysed 1,388 randomly selected participants.

Of the total participants, 840 (61 percent) consumed more than one caffeinated product daily.

The researchers found no differences in the number of PACs or PVCs per hour across levels of coffee, tea and chocolate consumption. More frequent consumption of these products was not associated with extra heartbeats.

“This was the first community-based sample to look at the impact of caffeine on extra heartbeats, as previous studies looked at people with known arrhythmias,” said lead author Shalini Dixit, a medical student at UCSF.

Want to live longer? Charge up on your cup of coffee. According to a study, caffeine consumption may prolong the lifespan of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Drinking coffee can Reduce mortality

The findings showed a dose-dependent inverse association between caffeine and all-cause mortality.

People who had the highest intake of coffee had 24 percent lower risks of dying, while those in the second, third quartile of caffeine consumption had 12 percent and 22 percent lower risk.

“These results suggest that advising patients with CKD to drink more caffeine may reduce their mortality. This would represent a simple, clinically beneficial, and inexpensive option,” said Miguel Bigotte Vieira from Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Norte, in Portugal.

However, “this benefit should ideally be confirmed in a randomised clinical trial”, Vieira added.

For the study, the team examined the association of caffeine consumption with mortality among 2328 patients with CKD. The results will be presented at the ongoing ASN Kidney Week 2017 in New Orleans.

Moreover, this observational study cannot prove that drinking coffee reduces the risk of death in patients with CKD, but only suggests the possibility of such a protective effect, Vieira stressed.

Drinking coffee can also reduce diabetes risk, revealed a reported in the American Chemical Society Journal of Natural Products.(IANS)